Part 8 (2/2)

MR HUGHES.

By the end of 1972, the Shannon scam had turned into an immense money provider. Admittedly, it was erratic and irregular. It was inescapably infested with McCann madness and the accompanying fears, whether real, contrived, or imaginary, of IRA partic.i.p.ation. Nevertheless, many had made small and large fortunes as a result and were busily squandering them on fantasy fulfilment. Junior university lecturers could buy expensive cars that worked; those who'd always wanted to run a bar, cafe, or other small business could at least make a start; and I had boxes of money that I didn't know what to do with.

It was odd: I would still have recurring dreams of winning the football pools even though I had more than the prize money lying idly under the bed. I had more than enough money to retire for the rest of my life, but I wanted more, lots more. I wanted an inexhaustible supply. My lifestyle was becoming unacceptably flash, and Oxfords.h.i.+re family country life lost its charm. London clubs took the place of Oxford pubs. I determined to expand my legitimate business activities as well as my dope-smuggling antics, and envisioned an AnnaBelinda boutique in each of the world's major cities.

At this point I was recruited to work for the British Secret Service. Hamilton McMillan (Mac), whom I had not seen since my postgraduate days, appeared one day at AnnaBelinda. We had a few drinks and a chat about old times. He had changed very little, still sporting his lamb-chop sideboards and bl.u.s.tering with mischievous arrogance. The Foreign Office were his current employers. For a while we kept up the charade of two Oxford chums, a junior diplomat and a small businessman, nostalgically mulling over the good old days. Then he admitted he actually worked as a spy for MI6, the security department of the Foreign Office. I admitted, without divulging any detail, that some of my money resulted from has.h.i.+sh smuggling. A general discussion of cannabis took place. Yes, of course it should be legalised. I pointed out that cannabis tended to be cultivated in countries particularly susceptible to political turmoil: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Colombia, and Morocco, to name but a few, and that those able to export it were invariably powerful individuals within their societies. He was fascinated with the amount of European travel I had done and with my plans for AnnaBelinda expansion.

'Howard, I'll come straight to the point. I haven't just turned up on your doorstep without doing my research. Will you help us?'

'You want me to be a spy, Mac?' I asked, clearly very surprised.

'It's not a word we use. But there are a number of areas where someone like you can be of immeasurable a.s.sistance to us. I still remember your extraordinary ability to pick up girls. You will always meet interesting people. Your legendary charm has not diminished.'

I liked what I was hearing. Was he going to throw me into bed with beautiful spies? The idea of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g some voluptuous Mata Hari behind the Iron Curtain had its attractions.

'Keep talking, Mac.'

'At first, we just want to use some of your business establishments.'

'As what, Mac?'

'Letter drops, safe houses, that kind of thing. We would encourage you to open businesses in Romania and Czechoslovakia. Then, more interesting work would be unavoidable. I know you, Howard. You'll love it.'

'Sign me up, Mac. Just tell me what you want me to do.'

'At the moment, just carry on expanding, and keep your eyes and ears wide open.'

Mac left me with his home phone number, and with his office number, which I'll never forget 928-5600.

'It's listed in the London telephone book under Her Majesty's Foreign Office, Parliamentary under-secretary. Ask for me by name, if you come across anything you think I should know. In any event, I'll contact you within the next few months.'

Mac's overtures had really got me going. What a front! A secret-service agent. James Bond. Not a licence to kill. I didn't want or need anything like that. But could it be a licence to smuggle has.h.i.+sh? Now, that I could definitely use. I'd better not tell McCann. The British Secret Service weren't too popular in Belfast. I'd better not tell anyone.

In early 1973, I decided to invest some of the cardboard boxes of money in dope deals that didn't involve McCann. An old Oxford acquaintance had a friend, Eric, who claimed he could smuggle suitcases from Beirut to Geneva through a personal connection in Middle East Airlines. Eric needed to be supplied with the has.h.i.+sh in Beirut. Furthermore, if given a boatload of has.h.i.+sh on a Lebanese beach, Eric was prepared to sail it to Italy. I discussed these possibilities with Graham, and we agreed to begin work on them. We gave Eric a couple of hundred grand and told him to get on with it.

Graham also mentioned an idea he had been presented with. A friend of his, James Morris, was responsible for manufacturing and arranging the transport of pop group equipment to and from the United States. In those days, British pop was at its peak of excellence, and groups such as Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer would frequently tour America with container trucks full of enormous speakers and amplifiers. The equipment, because it was only temporarily imported into America, underwent minimal examination by United States Customs. If the paperwork was in order, the equipment went straight through. Although source countries like Pakistan and Lebanon were not hosting British pop concerts, European countries were. Has.h.i.+sh was three times more expensive in America than in Europe. The scam was obvious. Fill the speakers with hash in a European country. Air-freight them across the Atlantic. Take the has.h.i.+sh out in America. Put bricks back in the speakers to avoid the possibility of weight discrepancies appearing on air waybills. Bring the speakers back across the Atlantic, and wait to get paid. Let's do it.

Mohammed Durrani was still coming up with Pakistani and Afghani diplomats who were moving several hundred kilos of has.h.i.+sh with their personal effects as they took up their positions in various Middle Eastern emba.s.sies throughout Europe. Lebanese Sam was doing the same thing with Lebanese diplomats, and, of course, he was only too glad to supply Eric with any of his needs in Lebanon. One of Sam's contacts had just smuggled a few hundred kilos into Paris, and in March 1973 the first transatlantic rock-group scam took place. None of James Morris's rock groups were actually due to tour America at the time, so four out-of-work musicians were hurriedly banded together to form a group called Laughing Gra.s.s and behave as if they had an engagement in California. Rock bands were continually splitting up and reforming with slight personnel modifications: there should be no grounds for suspicion.

The speakers were loaded with has.h.i.+sh in the remote French countryside and air-freighted from Paris to Los Angeles, via New York. It worked like a dream. Graham's Brotherhood of Eternal Love contact, Ernie Combs, sold the has.h.i.+sh in California. I occasionally talked to him over the telephone when Graham was unable to. Ernie was invariably happy, witty, and extremely sharp. We developed an excellent telephonic rapport with each other.

A few weeks later, Mohammed Durrani came up with some Pakistani has.h.i.+sh in Vienna. This time we didn't even take the precaution of finding or creating a suitable touring British rock group. A name was written in the appropriate place on the customs form; that was all. The has.h.i.+sh was again sent to Philadelphia. No problems.

Eric was as good as his word and turned up at Geneva airport with a hundred kilos of Lebanese has.h.i.+sh that Sam had provided outside Beirut airport. It wasn't enough to justify a rock-group scam, so I asked Anthony Woodhead to drive it from Switzerland to England. He did so without a hitch. I paid everybody off and asked them to do the same again. This they did several times, until Eric had to concentrate on his Mediterranean boat scam. He was now in a position to pick up has.h.i.+sh off Lebanese Sam at the port of Juni, Lebanon.

During Eric's air-freight scams, I occasionally monitored his pa.s.sage through Geneva airport. I noticed that some international flights had stopped in Zurich before the last leg to Geneva, and further noticed that suitcases checked in at Zurich emerged on arrival at Geneva on the same carousel as suitcases checked in at airports outside of Switzerland. This was worthy of focused investigation, and I was delighted to discover the existence of a Swissair flight whose itinerary was KarachiZurichGeneva. I flew the flight's ZurichGeneva leg. At Geneva airport the immigration police asked to see my ticket. They gave a cursory glance and let me through to pick up my luggage. There was no customs check after baggage pick-up.

Graham and I sent Anthony Woodhead to Karachi and asked him to catch this potential goldmine of a Swissair flight just to see what would happen. I waited at Geneva airport. When Woodhead showed his ticket, they took him to the luggage carousel to identify his suitcase, which they then thoroughly searched. We sent Woodhead back out to Karachi and arranged with Durrani and Raoul to fill Woodhead's suitcase with has.h.i.+sh. Woodhead got on the ZurichGeneva flight. In Zurich, I got on the same plane with another suitcase, which had previously been filled with Woodhead's effects. I got off the plane first and showed my ticket to the Geneva immigration police, who waved me through. I picked up Woodhead's suitcase of has.h.i.+sh from the luggage carousel and carried it out. Woodhead showed his ticket. Swiss Customs wanted to see his suitcase. He showed them mine and displayed its innocent contents. Later on, I gave him back his suitcase, and he drove the has.h.i.+sh to London. We repeated this a few times until the Swiss changed their customs procedures, rendering the scam impossible.

My first a.s.signment for MI6 was to seduce a female employee of the Czechoslovakian Emba.s.sy. Mac's bosses thought she was a KGB agent. She was known to be attending a forthcoming birthday party, and it had been arranged for invitations to be issued to me and Mac. I was shown a few photographs. She looked nice. The party took place in Highgate. I didn't know anyone there other than Mac. The girl didn't show up, and I wasn't even offered expenses. This business was clearly a test of one's patriotism and patience. No wonder they kept it secret.

Much as Graham and I were enjoying the lack of business with McCann, it was difficult to resist. We planned to send 1,500 kilos, our biggest load yet, to Shannon and deliver it to Moone. Some we would move in the usual way on the ferry to England. The rest we would take to another house in County Cork, rented by Woodhead, whose location was unknown to McCann, and air-freight it from Dublin to New York in James Morris's Transatlantic Sounds rock-group equipment. We could take care of paying McCann and the Pakistanis out of the British sales, and McCann wouldn't know we were making heaps more money by selling has.h.i.+sh in California. I was soon sitting on a ton and a half of Pakistani has.h.i.+sh in the curious Moone property, loading up the first drivers for the ferry before das.h.i.+ng to catch the next flight to London.

We couldn't use the Winchester garage as the British destas.h.i.+ng point after the Dutch fiasco. James Goldsack had his own facilities, so the first two carloads were sent across on the ferry to him while a few other carloads went to the place in County Cork. While selling the first carload, James Goldsack was busted. The second carload of has.h.i.+sh had been parked outside Hammersmith Police Station. James was being grilled inside the police station. In an extraordinary display of pure courage, Patrick Lane broke into the car and retrieved the has.h.i.+sh. I took it from Patrick to Rosie's cottage in Yarnton. I repackaged the has.h.i.+sh from its plastic wrappings into suitcases and threw the plastic wrappings on to a pile of litter on the country roadside.

Transatlantic Sounds rock-group equipment was sent from London to Cork, filled up with has.h.i.+sh at Woodhead's Irish country place, and air-freighted from Dublin to the United States.

We badly needed a new destas.h.i.+ng premises in England, so Marty rented a farmhouse near Trelleck in Monmouths.h.i.+re. Has.h.i.+sh from Ireland and Oxford acc.u.mulated in Wales. Jarvis sold enough to pay off McCann, Pakistan, and the drivers. The rock-group equipment was destashed in California by Ernie Combs and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Ernie sold the lot at three times the price we would have got in London in just one day. Greatly impressed, we filled some more Transatlantic Sounds speakers with what has.h.i.+sh was left in Marty's Trelleck farmhouse and sent them from Heathrow to Phoenix. We took a week's breather.

There were worries whether James Goldsack would talk. Would he blow the Irish scam? In fact James was as solid as a rock. He admitted being a has.h.i.+sh dealer and refused to testify against anyone else. Nothing seemed to be compromised. The Irish scam was still unknown to the authorities.

During the week's inactivity, I invited my parents and grandmother to visit Rosie, me, and the children at the cottage in Yarnton. It was a warm spring Sunday afternoon. My grandmother was doting over little Myfanwy. Emily was playing dressing up with my father. Rosie and my mother discussed maternal matters. I was trying to stabilise. A police car drove up the little lane and pulled to a halt outside the cottage. Two members of the Thames Valley Constabulary emerged holding a few of the plastic wrappings I had just discarded on the roadside. I remained seated, paralysed. My mother looked at me, puzzled and worried. She could tell I was uneasy.

'Does someone called Emily live here?' asked one of the policemen, unexpectedly.

'Yes, that's my daughter. Why?' Rosie was unshaken.

'Is this envelope hers?' asked the policeman, pulling out a small envelope addressed to Emily at Yarnton.

I then realised what must have happened. Emily, in childish innocence, must have stuffed one of her letters into the waste-bag containing the has.h.i.+sh wrappings. Instead of taking the wrappings to a rubbish dump or burning them, I had stupidly thrown them away at the roadside. Someone had discovered them. The wrappings were full of crumbs of cannabis, covered with my fingerprints, and accompanied by an envelope which had been in my house. This could be serious.

'Yes, it is. Where did you get it?'

Rosie was still completely unshaken. Did she realise the danger we were in?

'It was with these, ma'am,' said the policeman, holding up some plastic wrappings.

'Have you seen these before?' the second policeman addressed the family group as a whole.

'Well, no,' said my mother.

'We've just arrived from South Wales, Officer,' said my father. 'How would we know anything?'

Dad was always firm with police.

My grandmother kept playing with Myfanwy as if the policemen did not exist. The first policeman looked me directly in the eyes.

'What about you, sir? Familiar to you, are they? Obviously, they came from here, didn't they?'

'No, I've never seen them before.'

'Oh! Now I remember,' interjected Rosie with first-cla.s.s criminal inspiration. 'The man who came to fix the damp course last week had a big bag of these wrappings left over when he'd finished doing his work. I suppose all the chemicals he used must have been in them.'

'I don't suppose you have his name and number, ma'am.'

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